Learning about technology: Family vs. peer pairings

Recently a number of institutions have begun sponsoring nondeficit science and/or technology learning experiences for parents and their middle school-aged children which are intended to be enriching rather than remedial or compensatory in purpose. Very little research documenting the effects of parental involvement in the education of older children has been reported, however. The intent of this article was to present two studies designed to determine whether middle school-aged children's attitudes and content achievement are different when they take a technology course with their parents (parent-child treatment) or with their peers (child-child treatment). The first study focused on learning about communications technology (primarily telegraphs, telephones and radios); the second study focused on microcomputers. Results indicate that parents have little affect in helping their children learn the subject matter of technology courses. Likewise, parents do not affect children's attitudes toward computers. Both results were attenuated by the fact that the students in the studies were high achievers who were interested in and motivated to learn the subject matter, regardless of treatment. Significant differences were noted for computer literacy favoring the parent-child group, however. Parents also seemed to effect children's attitudes toward the subject matter of the courses. Further research needs to be done with less appealing course content or with less motivated students to fully determine the effect of parent-child and child groupings in science and technology courses.     

What Constitutes Good Mathematics Teaching and How it Develops: Nine High School Teachers’ Perspectives

Scholars of decades past, current researchers, and various reform documents all deal, directly or indirectly, with the question of what constitutes good mathematics teaching. Often good teaching is situated in the context of broader educational goals, such as preparing literate citizenry. Researchers generally define good teaching implicitly with attention to various processes such as reasoning and problem solving. In a series of three interviews, we examined nine experienced and professionally active teachers’ views of good mathematics teaching and how it develops. The interviews were couched in the context of the teachers mentoring student teachers. In general, these teachers thought good teaching requires a sound knowledge of mathematics, promotes mathematical understanding, engages and motivates students, and requires effective management skills. Furthermore, the teachers felt that good teaching is developed from experience, education, personal reading and reflection, and interaction with colleagues. Experience was considered the primary contributor. The article compares and contrasts the teachers’ notions of good teaching with those of various scholars and researchers and positions stated in various reform documents.     

Developing a Research Agenda in Science Education

The Science Summit reinforced a question upon which many of us in science education are focused: How can we, the science education community of researchers, practitioners, and consumers, lead policy? We include a brief review of the No Child Left Behind Act and its implications for teachers, and elaborate about one ongoing and growing effort to answer the concerns about the paucity of research expressed at the Summit. We describe a unique and growing collaboration across professional science education and science organizations and societies that focuses on the development of a research agenda. The term ‘consilience’ refers to the “jumping together of knowledge” that leads to scientific advancements, progressive, creative, fluid scientific research and intellectual capacity to move a research community toward an enlightened research agenda. A coherent research agenda enables us to specify what we know, what we need to know, and how research can be employed for creating and implementing policy. The use of a dynamic organizer (such as Pasteur’s Quadrant) for a research matrix of topics provides a possible structure for organizing and cataloging research questions, designs, findings from past studies, needed areas for research, and policy implications. Through this unique collaboration, the science education community can better focus on needs and priorities and ensure that teachers, policy makers, scientists, and researchers in education at local through national levels have an important stake in research priorities and actions.     

Making connections: Using skill theory to recognize how students build and rebuild understanding

In this companion to Marc Schwartz and Kurt Fischer's article, Patricia King and JoNes VanHecke describe how student affairs educators can help students become sophisticated thinkers.